Zhang Yuanqing stole two bottles of fine wine from Fu Qingyang's cabinet, a high-end ham from the kitchen, and a box of premium Cuban cigars from Ling Jun's room.
He had stolen Fu Qingyang's cigars last time, so he couldn't keep fleecing Qian Gongzi.
Returning to his villa, he asked the Queen for the car keys and set off alone.
The task he was about to undertake was not suitable for teammates, not even Guan Ya.
Zhang Yuanqing's hometown was in a rural area on the outskirts of Songfu, back when Songhai City had not yet become the national financial center, a super-first-tier metropolis.
The pride of Songfu people was still there, and when they mentioned Songhai next door, they habitually raised their chins and said:
"Back then, Songhai was just a small fishing village, a godforsaken place, a rural area under the jurisdiction of our Songfu."
Now Songfu is just a district of Songhai, and a district far from the bustling area.
Zhang Yuanqing drove his white car through the bustling streets, turned onto the outer ring elevated road, and after half an hour, left the city and entered the Sheling Tunnel.
Unlike the Sheling Tunnel in The Way of the Extraordinary, the real Sheling Tunnel has clean and smooth asphalt roads, and the xenon lights at the top of the tunnel are bright white.
The traffic flows back and forth, with no trace of a terrifying or eerie atmosphere.
In the slight noise of the wheels rolling over the asphalt road, Zhang Yuanqing couldn't help but recall the fear and anxiety he felt when he first entered The Way of the Extraordinary, and for a moment he felt a lot of emotion.
Time flies, and years pass like a shuttle, and now he is already
"Bah, it's only been four months, it's not time for me to reminisce about the past yet." Zhang Yuanqing muttered in his heart, cut off the divergent thoughts, and focused on driving.
Another twenty minutes passed, and he arrived at his father's hometown, Jian Village."
Oh no, it's now called Jian Community.
Zhang Yuanqing hadn't been here for many years, and the rural area he remembered was gone. New villas and residential buildings had sprung up everywhere. The streets were full of shops, a scene of prosperity.
He remembered that everyone's houses used to be north-facing red brick houses, with a corridor on each floor. In the summer, during heavy rains, the corridor would get wet from the rain.
After his father passed away, his mother took him back to Songhai. Within a few years, Jian Village was demolished.
His mother didn't want a house, she exchanged everything for compensation, plus the savings from her work in those years, and bought a large flat in Kangyang District.
Although Zhang Yuanqing didn't live the life of a rich second generation who collects rent, the large flat in his house is now worth 40 million.
While Zhang Yuanqing examined the unrecognizable village, he recalled his family history. His father, Zhang Zizhen, was the only son in the family. It is said that his grandmother suffered a serious illness the year after she gave birth to him and could no longer have children.
So his father became a rare only child at that time.
When this only child was ten years old, his grandfather was killed by a crazed ox that broke his lungs while working with the production team.
His grandmother took on the family's livelihood alone, and before his father came of age, she became ill from overwork and passed away.
So Zhang Yuanqing has no uncles or aunts.
His grandfather's generation did have a few siblings, but they either married far away and cut off contact, or went abroad due to the turmoil of those years, and basically no longer contacted each other.
The closest relative Zhang Yuanqing could find was from the lineage of his father Zhang Zizhen's great-uncle, that is, his great-grandfather's younger brother.
He parked his car on the side of the road, followed his childhood memories, and returned to the 'village' where he used to live. He stopped a gray-haired auntie leisurely walking on the bustling roadside and asked in the Songfu dialect:
"Where does Zhang Guojun live now?"
"Zhang Guojun?" The auntie was stunned for a few seconds, and didn't react for a while, "I don't know him."
"You are from Jian Village, how can you not know him? Zhang Guojun is from your father's generation." After all, the years were too long ago, Zhang Yuanqing reminded.
The auntie then reacted, that there used to be such an elder in the village, and looked at the young man in front of her in surprise:
"Are you looking for him? He's been dead for many years."
"I am his relative, he is my father's great-uncle." Zhang Yuanqing explained.
"So you are one of us…" The auntie immediately felt friendly, pointed behind her, and said:
"His son lives in Building 18, Room 207. Rooms 208 and 209 also belong to their family, but he lives in 207, and 208 and 209 are rented out. Alas, his son also died of cancer a few years ago, you have to find his grandson."
After speaking, the auntie tentatively asked: "Who is your father?"
"My father is Zhang Zizhen."
The auntie said "Oh" loudly, and said in a biting tone:
"You are Zhang Zizhen's son, let me think… I remember, didn't your mother take you to remarry?"
"She didn't remarry, my mother took me back to her mother's house." Zhang Yuanqing thought to himself, although he didn't remember it, the auntie was from the same village as me back then, so it's a good opportunity to ask about his father, so he said:
"Do you still remember my father?"
"Who doesn't remember that little swindler, saying he was the reincarnation of the Purple Star Emperor, swindling money from fortune-telling all over the village." The auntie's tone began to gnash her teeth again:
"Back then, he even tricked me, saying that the Feng Shui in my house was not good, and there was an evil spirit, so my old man's toes would hurt. It was a ghost hugging his feet, and he needed to use his virgin urine to water it for forty-nine days, two cents a day."
"Later, when he couldn't stand the pain, he went to the hospital and found out it was gout. Little bastard, he made my old man smell like urine every day. Everyone in the village was tricked by him."
[Seriously, I have been using the Yeguo Reading app to read and update recently. It supports source switching and has multiple reading voices. Both Android and Apple are available.]
Some people are dead, but they still live in other people's hearts, and every time they think about it, they jump with anger.
"It's all in the past, let the past fade away with the wind…" Zhang Yuanqing said quickly:
"Auntie, you go ahead, I won't bother you."
He fled in a hurry.
Returning to the car, he took out the gifts he had stolen, and then bought a bag of fruit and two packs of cigarettes from the street. Zhang Yuanqing followed the direction pointed out by the auntie and found Room 207 in Building 18.
"Ding Dong!!!"
He rang the doorbell.
After a while, the anti-theft door opened, and behind the door was a middle-aged man in his forties, slightly obese, with swollen eye bags, looking at the stranger at the door, he asked:
"Who are you looking for?"
Zhang Yuanqing tried hard to stare at the middle-aged man, trying to remember the face from his mind, but he had no impression at all.
"I am Zhang Zizhen's son, Zhang Yuanqing." He announced his identity.
"Zizhen's son…" The middle-aged man was obviously stunned, and then his face suddenly became excited, both surprised and delighted, and said:
"You've grown so big? Come in, come in and sit down."
Zhang Yuanqing carried the big and small gifts into the living room, and while sitting down on the sofa, he said:
"Uncle, no need to pour water, I'll just sit for a while and leave."
At the same time, he introduced the gifts he had brought, such as whiskey worth tens of thousands, a limited edition Cohiba worth five thousand yuan, and ham worth thirty to forty thousand yuan.
"Why bring such expensive gifts, how can I be embarrassed to accept them." The middle-aged man was stunned.
"My mother made some money from speculating on real estate, and asked me to come and see you. I'm going abroad at the end of the year, and in the future, my father's grave will be taken care of by you. Visit it during the Qingming Festival, so he won't be lonely."
Zhang Yuanqing told a lie without hesitation.
The middle-aged man reluctantly accepted it, and said with emotion:
"Going abroad, going abroad is good, now rich people are thinking about going abroad, alas, back then your mother took you back to her mother's house, and it's been more than ten years, and you haven't come back to see it. But there's really nothing to see, Zizhen has no siblings here!"
After some small talk, Zhang Yuanqing learned that the uncle's name was Zhang Zitao, and he was his father's distant cousin.
"I heard from my mother that he stayed in a Taoist temple when he was a child?" Zhang Yuanqing began to inquire about his father's past.
The main purpose of his return to his hometown this time was to find out two things: the truth about his father's death and his enemies.
Zhang Zitao nodded, recalling, and said:
"He did stay there. Life was very difficult back then. Your uncle left early, and Zizhen was weak when he was a child. Your grandmother was afraid that he wouldn't survive, so she sent him to a Taoist temple. There was a Taoist temple near the village at that time, I remember it was called Xiaoyao Temple."
"The Taoists inside specialized in handling funerals for the village and were also barefoot doctors."
Xiaoyao Temple?? I seem to know where the name of the 'Free Wanderers' organization comes from… Zhang Yuanqing got to the point and asked:
"My mother said that after my father had a car accident, it was Great-Uncle who prepared the body for burial. Where did he have the accident?"
Since his father couldn't have died in a car accident, then there was no such thing as being hit, and the scene of the incident certainly wouldn't exist. As a corpse preparer, Great-Uncle at least knew how Zhang Zizhen died.
Zhang Zitao shook his head: "I was working outside at the time, so I don't know very well. I just remember my father saying that your mother called him over, and after he came back, he notified the family to hold a funeral for Zizhen, saying that he had a car accident."
As expected, I knew it couldn't have been a car accident. A car that can kill a peak Overlord would have to be at least a demigod-level car.
A doubt in Zhang Yuanqing's mind was answered.
When he found out that his father knew the spirit of the zoo, he suspected that his father didn't die in a car accident!
With the news gathered in the past few days, knowing that the Free Wanderers organization existed, he didn't believe it even more.
Now that Great-Uncle has passed away, if he wants to know the real cause of his father's death, he has to find his mother who is far away abroad, but if everything that the Palace Master of Stopping Slaughter said is true, then maybe his mother doesn't know the real cause of his father's death.
She just had a premonition about his death and was mentally prepared.
"I met an auntie on the way here, she said that my father used to often swindle people in the village? He must have had a lot of enemies, where did he work before?" Zhang Yuanqing asked about the old days in a joking tone.
This was the second purpose of coming here today.
"Enemies??? He used to be quite a swindler, but that was all when he was a child, and everyone pitied his life experience, so if he swindled, he swindled, just consider it giving him a meal. Where would he get enemies?"
Zhang Zitao waved his hand and said, "After he married your mother, he became stable all of a sudden, and he never swindled anyone again. As for work, I don't remember very clearly, but he was often not at home, and couldn't be found every few days. I also advised her, saying that she should keep a close eye on her wife, how could she often let her be at home alone? Your mother was very beautiful when she was young."
My father was probably busy killing Overlords and running dungeons every day. Zhang Yuanqing asked:
"After my father got married, did he always live in the village? Did he ever take my mother away?"
He wanted to know if his father had escaped to take refuge, and if so, when did it happen?
Zhang Zitao thought for a while and shook his head, "It doesn't seem like it!"
The two chatted for a while, and Zhang Yuanqing didn't get any valuable clues. He was a little disappointed, but he was unwilling to go back like this.
Think again, think again about what to ask, what small details are useful to me, and what Uncle Zitao knows. He actively used his brain! Uncle Zitao is an ordinary person, even if his father had enemies, he wouldn't tell him, and he wasn't in the village when his father died.
Great-Uncle has passed away, and Great-Uncle's son has also passed away. The people from the past are all gone, it's not easy to investigate.
Zhang Yuanqing sighed in his heart, made a curious face, and smiled
"What skills did my father learn in the Taoist temple? Can he really do magic?"
He planned to first find out when his father became a The Way of the Extraordinary. Given Zhang Zizhen's personality in everyone's mouth, he had been a charlatan for most of his life. One day, he suddenly became a Night Wanderer and really gained the supernatural ability to catch ghosts and exorcise evil spirits, he would definitely rush to prove that he had real skills!
Loose cultivators have always lacked vigilance in this regard.'
Zhang Zitao laughed and said: "How can he know any magic? He only did odd jobs in the Taoist temple, practiced a few fake moves, and then followed the Taoists to handle funerals and see patients, etc."
"Alas, it's a waste of time." Zhang Yuanqing got up with a disappointed face and said:
"Uncle, then I'll go back first."
Zhang Zitao tried to persuade him to stay, "Why don't you stay for lunch."
"No, I have classes in the afternoon, I won't be able to make it back if I eat lunch." Zhang Yuanqing refused.
Zhang Zitao didn't insist anymore and sent him out. Before leaving, Zhang Yuanqing thought of another question and said
"Why didn't my father inherit the Taoist temple? Being a barefoot doctor and handling funerals can also make a living, it's better than swindling people."
"It seems that it was shut down when feudal superstition was eliminated. Your father had nowhere to go, so he could only swindle people in the village." Zhang Zitao said:
"That Taoist temple was a bit mystical. He stayed in it for more than a year, and then kept shouting that he was a descendant of the Free Wanderers sect, saying that the Free Wanderers sect was a sect passed down from ancient times. When we played together, he also said that he would take me as a handyman and ask me to give him my new clothes and new shoes as tribute."
"Every time he said that, I would beat him!"
Passed down from ancient times? Zhang Yuanqing was startled and stopped abruptly, his tone a little anxious:
"A sect passed down from ancient times? What do you mean, Uncle, explain it clearly."
Zhang Zitao didn't understand why his nephew was suddenly anxious, and laughed:
"Who still remembers this, it's been decades."
"Uncle, I'm going abroad at the end of the year, and I don't know when I'll be back, so I won't be able to hear about my father's past anymore. Think about it again."
Zhang Zitao frowned and thought for a long time, and said helplessly:
"He said that he saw in the ancient books of Xiaoyao Temple that the end of the world was coming soon, and the ancient times had already experienced the end of the world once! The Free Wanderers sect was a sect that survived at that time."
"He also said that he had to find a way to save the world, and if he didn't want to die, he should give him new clothes and new shoes as tribute… That's probably it, I really can't remember, I only remember that his original words were very formal, just reciting things from books."
"No way…" Zhang Yuanqing was silent, thinking, and after a while, said:
"Uncle, could my father draw talismans?"
Zhang Zitao nodded, "Aren't Taoists just drawing talismans?"
"Do you remember what kind of talismans my father drew?"
"I don't remember."
"Let's go inside first!"
The two returned to the house. In Zhang Zitao's dazed gaze, Zhang Yuanqing found a ballpoint pen and a piece of white paper in the living room, and drew a corpse-suppressing talisman with flying strokes.
A corpse-suppressing talisman that only had the appearance but no spiritual power!
Zhang Zitao stared at it for a few seconds, slapped his thigh:
"Yes, yes, it's this kind of talisman, weird, so he taught you that."
Huadu, Wanbao House.
A young man wearing big shorts, a black T-shirt, and flip-flops walked into a small shop that, in the eyes of ordinary people, had been closed for many years.
The young man wore a baseball cap and a mask, and slowly scanned the messy shop, finally settling on the cashier counter.
On the soft chair behind the cashier counter, lay a charming and lazy mature woman, holding a cigar in her hand, her eyebrows and eyes lazy, like a casual guest playing in the world.
The young man approached, stared at the woman, and under the baseball cap, revealed a pair of gloomy and crazy eyes, and said:
"I heard that this is the largest intelligence distribution center in the south, with the largest black market, is this it?"
Lian Sanyue raised her eyelids and glanced at him: "Buying props, materials, or intelligence."
The young man's eyes hid madness, and he said in a deep voice:
"I want to buy intelligence, the distribution list of Night Wanderers of the Taiyi Sect in all major branches across the country."
Lian Sanyue said:
"I have a rule, I don't sell intelligence that is detrimental to the official, this is the basis for the shop to continue operating. But you can enter the black market and find someone to trade with yourself. Do you have a hand card?"
"No!"
"Ten thousand yuan a piece."
"No money!"
"If you don't have money, get out, you lonely ghost."
"To be able to see that I am a body snatcher is worthy of being an Overlord." The young man chuckled, his expression still crazy, like a lunatic who could lose control at any time.
He took out a bead from his pocket and placed it on the cashier counter
"Mortgage it to you, I'll come back to get it in three days."
The bead glowed and showed dreamlike pictures.
Lian Sanyue grabbed the bead, examined it a few times, and said: "Sage quality, Dream Bead, worth about 20 million, deal."
She opened the drawer of the cashier counter and took out a hand card and crushed it.
The young man's eyes blurred, and the small shop turned into a large market.
Lian Sanyue waved to a tall and strong man and instructed:
"Give him a sign, write the distribution list of Night Wanderers of the Taiyi Sect across the country on it, and put it on booth number six."
After the strong man retreated to do business, she glanced at the young man, threw him a mask, and said:
"This is just an intermediary market, I'm not responsible for your safety. If you are targeted by an official practitioner, it's okay here. Once you leave the door, your life and death are your own."
The young man grinned hideously:
"Target me? That's what I want."
Lian Sanyue bit her cigar, twisted her butt, and walked away.
The young man immediately sat down at booth number six and waited patiently.
Not long after, a man in a black robe, wearing a mask, approached and said in a hoarse voice: "
"You want the list of Night Wanderers of the Taiyi Sect? The Taiyi Sect has recently recalled most of the Night Wanderers, not many are left outside. I happen to have a copy, five million, for you."
The young man was silent for a few seconds, and laughed strangely: "How can I believe you?"
"The owner of Wanbao House can authenticate the authenticity."
"Deal!!!" The young man nodded, the eyes under the mask were filled with madness, and said:
"There are no such coincidences in the world, you are deliberately sending me the list, you can deduce my itinerary, the person behind you is not simple!"
The black-robed man laughed in a hoarse voice, "Worthy of being the head of the Pure Yang Sect, insightful."